Stuff You Should Know - How Hot Air Balloons Work

Episode Date: August 25, 2015

Arguably the most beautiful objects in the entire world, hot air balloons take advantage of some interesting physics and have a long history of killing their occupants. Find out more. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This season on Running the Break with CJ and Alex. Rapper Meek Mill, so obviously huge ties to Philly was at a Sixers game recently. And in what seemed like a real life curb your enthusiasm episode, he accidentally tripped a ref sitting courtside as the ref was running back up court. You know what CJ? I gotta say, I feel like that should be a technical foul, one free throw for the opposing team. Yes.

If you rep your town and your team as much as you do make mill that he's a Sixer, right? So the opposing team's got to take free throws or unless, you know, if we're going off of the curb episode, does Meek have the discography of that compares to like Seinfeld tapes that he could bring to the ref's, you know, hospital bed, shout out to curb, that was one of the greatest episodes ever. Listen to Running the Break with CJ and Alex on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts brought to you by FanDuel. Make every moment more with FanDuel Sportsbook, an official partner of the NBA.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry. We are up, up and away, our beautiful, our beautiful podcast. You know what I was disappointed to learn today? I've never read it, but around the world in 80 days, apparently it wasn't like a balloon race story.

I thought it was like this balloon on the cover of the VHS cassette tape. Well, the movie changed it and I looked up today, the original Jules Verne book. They said that he entertained the balloon thing, but then kind of disregarded it saying like it's not feasible. So it was like trains and other modes of chips and other modes of transportation. In the book? Yeah, and apparently the movie version took it and ran with it with a balloon and even such that a balloon is on the cover of a lot of the books now.

So in the movie, it's balloon-centric. They do it with a balloon. I think, but I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know if it's true. I haven't either. But whenever I think of that, I picture a balloon. Jules Verne is like, this is preposterous. We couldn't just do it in a balloon. I think that's the case.

I mean, I just skirted through this research, so I'm sure fans will hold me to the fire for this. Well, I think we should both go see that movie because I want to see it, too. Go see it? Go to a television and see it where it's streaming. Yeah, okay. I was like, I didn't know it was playing. Yeah, it's at all the synaplexes right now.

Didn't Owen Wilson remake it, too? Somebody did. I accidentally ran across that one, and before I could click, no, no, close the tab. I saw Jackie Chan was in it, and Steve Cougan. Oh, I love Cougs. Yeah. It doesn't mean that it was a good remake. You know what I mean?

Agreed. So, hot air balloons, have you ever been in one? No. Have you? No, and I never will, ever. In my whole life, I won't. It seems like something that would not be Joshy. No.

Josh-esque. No. I think it's one of things, one of my great joys in life is looking at pictures of hot air balloons. On the ground. Yeah, I just realized that. With your feet sitting on the ground in your chair, butt in the chair. Yeah.

But it's true. I do love looking at pictures of hot air balloons. Have you ever seen a race going on, or a gathering, like, been out in the driving? No, my dad went on a hot air balloon ride. I've seen them out, like, around Callaway Gardens. I've never been to, but there's, like, a really big hot air balloon expo there. Oh, really? Yeah.

It's coming up, actually, in September. Like, beginning, I think, like, September, maybe Labor Day weekend. Oh. I believe. Why did you sound disappointed just then? Well, I have plans for Labor Day weekend. Oh. Well.

So, no ballooning for me. No, but you can look at pictures of it afterward. Your hobby. Yeah. So, but no, I have never been in one. Will you? Well, I mean, I would, but I'm not like, it's not on my bucket list or anything. Right.

Like, if someone, like, if a fan wrote in and said, I'm a balloon pilot, I'd like to invite you on a free trip, then I would totally do it. I'll be by your house to pick you up, stand on your roof at 6 p.m. Or I may be somewhere close by, because you never know where we'll land. There's probably fans at Callaway Gardens. You should go down there with the stuff you should know T-shirt on, and just hang out. Sure. So, yeah.

And that was a teaser slash spoiler, by the way. That was not just a joke. I don't get it. That you never know where we're going to land. I don't get that at all. They don't know where they're going to land necessarily. Didn't you read the article? Oh, yeah.

I thought you were talking about us. No, no, no. I thought you were making, like, a reference to tour or something like that. No, no, no. I mean, the hot air pilot, well, the hot air balloon pilot would say, I may land at your house to pick you up, and I may be a pilot or two away. Got it. I'm going to put to you, Chuck, that no podcast has ever gone this far off the rails this

early in. I think we're right on the rails. Do you? We're talking about hot air balloons. See, we can't even agree on whether we're off the rails. All right, let's talk about this. Hot air balloons. Yes.

They actually have not the longest history you would think. Usually when we do something like this, we're like, you know, hot air balloons are actually thousands of years old. Yeah, ancient China. Not the case. No. The idea is that the understanding of the principles of how hot air balloons work have been around for a couple thousand years.

But hot air balloons themselves, and actually the first human to ever fly, didn't happen until the 18th century, until, I think, the 1780s, right? For the hot air balloon, 1783. With Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier. Not bad names. If you're going to be born in France, those are good names to have. That's right. And they worked for a paper company, their family's paper company.

And then on the side, like, you know, the little floating Japanese lanterns. I think they made those for fun out of paper. Right. They had leftover paper. And that we should have, I didn't look into that too much, by the way, for this, did you? The Montgolfier brothers? No, the lanterns. No, and I meant to be, I always think of, what was that movie about the tsunami?

Oh, yeah. There's like a scene in there, isn't there, where they release like a bunch of those? Was it the one with Naomi Watts? Yeah. Oh boy, that was a tough movie. I never saw it. You should check that out. Yeah?

It was very realistic and tough to get through. Which one should I watch first, that or around the world in 80 days? Yeah, the one I can't think of the name of. Okay. What was it called? It's like the great beneathers, they're the great, I don't know, I can't remember. It's something like that. Are you going to look it up?

Because if so, I'll start talking about balloon history while you're here. You should talk about balloon history. So anyway, the brothers Montgolfier, they started fashioning little, basically model hot air balloons out of paper from their family's mill, like you said. Yeah. And they said, this works. This works. Conceivably, if we make a big enough balloon, we could float livestock in the air if we

wanted to. And they did. They ran a test. And they were so sure of this test that they actually invited the king, Louis XVI, to come check it out. And they ran a test that involved a sheep, a duck and a chicken, which they put into a basket attached to a hot air balloon and said, voila. And they probably did say voila.

But they did. And the king went, ho, ho. They did. And actually, those weren't random selections of animals. They chose the sheep because it was similar to humans as far as being a land mammal, having a certain size. Hair. Sheep is represented with hair.

Well, one of the worries was is they wouldn't be able to. Ducks have feet. Yeah. They wouldn't be able to breathe up there. Yeah. So that's why they said, well, let's send a mammal up there to see if it survives. Yeah. That was one of the first things hot air balloons proved was that humans or living things can

breathe in the atmosphere. No one knew that before because no one had been into the atmosphere before. That's right. And the duck and the chicken, the rooster were chosen because they can both fly. So they were the control, but they can both fly at different altitudes. So they didn't just randomly throw three farm animals in there. Okay. A purpose behind each one.

So the sheep is like, what are you two worried about? You're the ones who can fly. Is that a French sheep? Okay. It sounded like droopy a little bit. It was a little bit. It was from the Burgundy region. That's what they sound like down there.

And by the way, the impossible was the name of that movie. The great underneath, the impossible, virtually the same thing. Agreed. So they floated it up there. In the beginning, they thought that the smoke was what provided lift because they were just silly 18th century goons. And the smoke was the only thing they could see, so they figured it had to be that. Yeah.

And they were definitely producing a lot of smoke because they were using straw, manure, whatever they could get their hands on to fuel these hot air balloons. Yeah. And their balloon was a rigid frame. It was a frame made of light wood and the balloon was cotton or silk. And so it wasn't like the non-rigid balloons that we have today. Yeah. The non-rigid canopies, maybe more specific.

So the Montgolfiers were feted by King Louis XVI. They all ate some lamb's legs together, I would assume. Oh, I bet. And then... They're out there gout. Yes. And then two months later, they're like, it's time for human trials. And they put two people, not themselves, in a balloon and set them up.

Yeah. The king wanted convicted criminals at first to pilot it because they figured that's just what you do back in those days. Let's just use these criminals for something. Hey, that's what connects this episode with the next one, convicted criminals. Spoiler. But he was talked out of that and said, no, we should probably get some people that kind of know what they're doing.

So they got a major in the infantry named Marquis Francois de l'Ordin. That's not bad. Darlande? Darlande. Yeah, yeah. And you do the second one. A physics professor, Pilatre de Rosier. Yeah.

Very nice. Pilatre de Rosier. Yeah. And de Rosier became not only the first human to pilot a balloon, but he became the first human to die piloting a balloon. Yeah. Not in that flight, though. A couple of decades later he did, right?

Yeah. He tried to fly over the English Channel and he had a great, bad idea that was to put a hydrogen balloon inside of the hot air balloon. Yeah. Why just use air? Use something lighter than air. Yeah. And that didn't work out so well because about 30 minutes into the flight, you apply fire

to a hydrogen balloon, it blew up. Yeah. And he died. Had he been a chemistry professor, this might have never happened, but he was a physics professor. Yeah. So he did die. That's right.

But those two actually were the first human beings on the planet to fly as far as we know. That's right. The whole world around in the history of humanity, those two did it. The first. Oh. What do you mean fly? Like you consider that flying? Yeah.

Like pre-right brothers? Yeah. And the right brothers are usually given the title of the first manned powered flight. Yeah. Because it's a little bit different than floating. Apparently they're not even that. Somebody else beat the right brothers to it. Of course.

That's a whole other podcast if you ask me. But this is the first flight of any sort as far as anybody knows. Yeah. Although didn't like the ancient Chinese hang glide? I don't know. I feel like they did and we've talked about it. Maybe. We'll find out.

I feel like the ancient Chinese did almost everything way before everyone else did. Yeah. They just didn't tell anybody about it because they were isolationists. Yeah. And look where it got them. Yeah. They're on the rise in the 21st century. So balloons fell out of fashion for a number of years because the dirigible which we did

a podcast on blimps came into fashion because you can steer those and you can take more people. Yeah. That's a big plus. You can steer them. Yeah. You're not at the mercy of the vagaries of the winds. And then there was something called the smoke balloon.

Did you? This sounds like fun. Was it about the flying Allens? No. Did we talk about them in the circus family episode? No. But we should have because they were a circus family and that's where a lot of the smoke balloon activity took place was in circuses and fairs in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Yeah. And that was, it was an act. This I would possibly do. No, you wouldn't. I might. Go look at the footage. Because it would be, it would be over fairly quickly. Your death?

Yeah, so tell them about, well, tell them what a smoke balloon is. Well, that's basically a balloon that's lifted from the ground with the fire, but it's not attached to fire. They basically just hold you to the ground till this thing is full and then they let you go and you shoot up in the air. And you're attached to the balloon. Yes. And you are hopefully wearing a parachute.

Yes. And everybody's holding the balloon down and then when everybody lets go, like you said, you shoot up into the air and then once you hit your apex and the balloon like loses heat and starts to come back down to earth, you get away from it and parachute down. It sounds great. Yeah. Well, the Flying Allens did all kinds of stuff. Like they, it was a family of, you know, like teenagers kids who like they were all

teenagers. Well, no, they were parents, but they were sending their teenage kids up like three at a time hanging and doing like trapeze work under these balloons, like one of them brought a cannon up and was shot out of a cannon. Sure. Because that's what you do, right? And I mean, it's just crazy. There's actual footage of them trapezing under a balloon and then dropping and parachuting.

Wow. And it's like a static line deal. There's no freefall really. You don't see that these days. What? Smoke balloon acts? No, it's because they're probably, I would say they're dangerous. It sounds a little dangerous, but thrilling.

Yes, I'm sure it was. So this was in the late 19th century, right? Is this smoke balloon? Early 1900s. So by the time this had happened, by the time smoke balloons were like a popular carnival attraction, hot air balloons had been basically totally abandoned in favor of dirgeables, right? Sure.

But it wasn't until the 1950s that they started to experience a revival. Apparently, the U.S. military, I think the Navy, the Office of Navy Research to be exact, from what I understand, they said, hey, we need to figure out a way to ferry sheep and ducks and chickens from point A to point B, but we don't want to spend a lot of money or put a lot of effort behind it. So you, Mr. Ed Yoast, come up with an idea for us. How are we going to move our sheep and chickens and ducks? Balloons, huh?

That's what he said. Yeah, he founded Raven Industries and they, in the mid-1950s, started designing these hot air balloons for the Navy. And that, I think he's the one that kind of, I don't know if he patented it literally, but he got on board with that light bulb shape. Well, I think he came up with it because his original designs were spheres, were perfectly round balloons. Yeah, no good.

No, we figured out that the way that the hot air heated up inside the balloon, the top of the balloon would be fully inflated, but the bottom wouldn't be, and that's not good. You want it pretty much uniformly inflated, so he just got rid of the bottom of the sphere and tapered it in to make what you, like you say, the light bulb design. I'm pretty sure it was him or at least his company. Yeah, he basically said, you don't need this extra material. Right, so what you think of when you think of a hot air balloon is from as recent as the 1960s.

That's right, and he started in the 60s selling them after the Navy said, eh, not so interested anymore, and he says, well, I think they're civilian applications like fun. They're like, we have no problem with that. Just please stop corresponding with us. That's right. Yeah. So that's a, it's a bit on history, and when we come back, we will get into how these crazy looking things work right for this.

Hey, everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. Just about everything you want to do in life depends on what you know.

To earn more, learn more at Houston Community College. HCC has more than 300 programs. You can take courses that transfer to a major university, or you can jump into an exciting career field in just two years or less. HCC has cutting edge programs like artificial intelligence and robotics, process technology, cybersecurity, solar technology, business, health sciences, and more. Bring classes are registering now, so frame your future at hccs.edu. All right, Josh, hot air balloons are based on one principle.

And even though this article has four pages of incomprehensible science. It's like seriously, we were saying earlier, it's like it's describing alchemy. Yeah. Like it doesn't necessarily. It's magic. It's science. And we will get into the science more, but very simply, hot air is lighter than cool air because it has less mass.

Right. So hot air rises. You've all heard that. It's going to be hotter. Your ceiling in your bedroom is at the floor. If you're trying to cool off, do not stand on a chair and put your face toward the ceiling. No. And that's also why you reverse your ceiling fans in the winter to bring that hot air

back down. That's exactly right, Chuck. But a cubic foot of air weighs about 28 grams, which is about an ounce. And if you heat that by 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it's going to weigh seven grams less. So essentially, each foot of that cubic air and a hot air balloon lifts about seven grams, which is not much. No, it's not. And that's why they're so huge to carry just that little basket with two or three people

in it. Yeah. Because if you can capture enough air and heat it all by 100 degrees, each cubic centimeter will lift its own seven grams. And all those cubic centimeters put together will lift a lot of weight. So for example, if you have 65,000 cubic feet of hot air, you can lift 1,000 pounds. That's pretty great. Like you said, that's why those balloon envelopes is what they're called are so big, right?

So like you said, we're going to we'll talk a little more about the science in a minute, but let's talk about the parts of the balloon, right? Parts as parts. I just gave away the name of the balloon itself. The envelope. Yes. The most beautiful part of the balloon, because wicker is ugly, frankly, but the balloon itself is gorgeous.

You're not into wicker? Not really, no. I would figure with your macrame obsession, you would be way into wicker. I'm obsessed with macrame because it's horrid, you know what I mean? But wicker doesn't, it's too pedestrian to be horrid. You know what I mean? Boy, the wicker association is going to. I'm sorry.

I know they've got a very strong lobby, but I'm not afraid of them. They're going to put a wicker foot up your butt. Yeah. Out. Exactly. Out. Yes, the envelope is made up of nylon triangles called gores, a bunch of them, and those gores are even made up of smaller parts sewn together.

Panels. Panels, if you will. Yeah, like the strip, you know how like a balloon has lines usually going down it. Those in between the lines, the whole thing from top to bottom, that's the gore, right? Yes. But the gore itself is made up of smaller panels that you can't see unless you're close to it. That's right.

Yeah. All sewn together. Nylon is what they use because it's light and it also has the nice feature that it's not as flammable. No. It has a high melting point. Yeah. So you can get it kind of hot before it starts to melt, like toast from Raiders of the Lost

Ark. That's right. What they use as their fuel and their propellant is heat brought on by propane, but not the kind of propane gas that you use in your backyard. This is compressed liquid propane. Right. Which means that it takes up a lot less space, so you can use smaller canisters, which is important because you are carrying them aboard the hot air balloon with you in the basket.

You want more space for paying customers than propane canisters. Well, you probably want the right mix of both. Sure. That's true. But if you can get a smaller and more propane in a smaller canister, that's ideal, hence why they use liquid propane. The problem is that if you just burn liquid propane, it's not going to burn as efficiently as say gas propane.

Yeah. You'll just burn through it. Well, they have figured out a way around this, Chuck. These burners, the things that are at the bottom of the envelope in the little ring that's called the skirt, those are the burners, and they're connected by hose to the propane canisters in the basket. That's right. On the burner itself is a coil that the propane comes into, and there's a pilot light that

heats that propane, it burns some of it as it's coming in, and then the heat from that burn off heats the coil so it turns that liquid propane into gas propane at the burner, then it ignites it, and that's what burns into the hot air within the envelope. So it's pretty clever. Correct. So it converts the liquid propane to gas propane at the burner so that you have a much more efficient burn. Right.

And sometimes, let's say if they're flying over a field of cattle, that thing's pretty loud when they're burning the gas. Yeah. And they're like, oh, we don't want to disturb the cattle, so they can actually, there's another valve where they can burn just the straight liquid like we were talking about. Right. It's much quieter. It'll keep you aloft.

Keep you aloft for a little while. I think it's a very nice thing to do because they don't want to scare the livestock. Sure. Well, and I imagine as a passenger, it's much more user-friendly, rider-friendly if you just hear that little sound and not that big, do it again. Yeah. That would annoy me at a certain point. I don't think it would annoy me.

If you're having a nice conversation, oh, man. Right. And the pilot's like, sorry, I'm just trying to keep us alive. Do you want to float or not? Right. Or fly, excuse me. I think floats accurate, too. So the skirt that we mentioned is, it is nylon as well, but it is coated in a fire-resistant

material, which is very key because that's where the hot stuff is. And so the basket is traditionally wicker, not for any kind of throwback purpose. I had no idea. I didn't either. I always figured it was throwback. I always thought they were just trying to annoy me. Like a beautiful hot air balloon, then like the world's ugliest little box, right? It turns out that wicker plays a role in absorbing the impact of landing.

Yeah. It makes sense. I still have a hard time believing they can't build something better. Getting out of like the same stuff they make super balls out of. Yeah. Or something with shocks or springs or, you know, that's like Kevlar, I don't know. Well, the other great aspect of it is when you add shocks or something, you're adding weight.

Wicker. You need the wicker to stand in, but because it's woven, it will absorb that impact and distribute it across the wicker rather than up into your knees as much. Yeah. I think. So it makes sense. It kills several birds with one stone. One of those, if it's not broke, don't fix it deals.

Probably. Like they've probably looked into it and been like, wicker's fine. But can't they like wrap it in construction paper or something? One guy made a glass bottom basket. It sounds terrible. I think it's a great idea. They should all be glass bottom because then you can just look at it. I know.

Well, you know that I would totally lose my mind. There is an upper, the more fuel you pump in there, it's going to rise, rise, rise, but there is an upper altitude limit because the air becomes thin and you can't lift the balloon any further. Basically, at a certain point, let's talk about what you're talking about real quick. Let's talk about the science. All right. So why, why it doesn't make any sense that you would not, that there would be an upper

limit that the balloon will only float up to a certain height in the atmosphere. It doesn't make sense until you understand the forces at play of what makes a hot air balloon float. Right? Right. It's actually pretty simple. I would advise you strongly that if you want to understand this. Don't read the article.

Don't read this article. Go find it elsewhere on the internet. Yeah. Just listen to us. Yeah. Okay. Well, we're trying. I guess is what I'm saying.

But the hot air balloon floats because of the principle of buoyancy or the buoyancy effect. Yes. Right? So buoyancy is an upward force that counteracts gravity. Right? That's right. So at sea level, gravity is at its strongest.

Boyancy is apparently at its weakest. Right? Okay. I believe. Maybe it's at its strongest. I just threw that in and I could be wrong. I'm going to back off of that part. But I do know that gravity is at its strongest at sea level, at least as far until you get

into the water and then it gets more stronger and stronger. At least until someone emails us and tells us otherwise. So the air at sea level has a lot of gravity acting on it. One of the reasons why it has a lot of gravity acting on it is because that's where the most molecules, air molecules are found in the entire atmosphere of the earth. Yeah. These air molecules are all around us at all times. Right.

We can't see them, but they're smashing into each other. They're creating energy, which is air pressure. Right. It's just the movement of these air particles combined with their mass. I mean, they're very, very tiny, but they still have mass because there's such a mind-boggling number of air molecules in the atmosphere. There's enough of them. They have enough of a combined mass that they have a substantial mass that gravity can act

on. That's right. And again, it has its strongest force at sea level, right? So air pressure is strongest at sea level because the air is denser there. Okay? Now, if you have air that's lighter than the air at sea level, that air will float. That's right. And when you apply heat to it, it's going to be lighter.

Right. And the reason it's lighter is because it expands. Right. Okay? So it's less dense. Yeah. Well, is it fewer molecules or just less dense? I think it's not necessarily fewer.

They just occupy a larger space. Right? Yeah, that makes sense. So it's less dense, which means just like with water, if you take a cork, a cork is less dense than water, which is why when you put a cork in water, it's going to float. Yeah. It's buoyant. Air is the same thing as water.

They're both fluids. Yeah. So the same principles are at work that Archimedes figured out years and years ago in the air as well. So if you could take this hot air and capture it in some sort of way in a very... Like an envelope of nylon? Yeah, like a very light vessel like that, it will float and it will displace, it will be as buoyant as in an equal amount to the weight of the air it displaces.

That's right. So it has that lift. So that's all that's at work is warmer air floats above colder air because it's less dense and all a hot air balloon does is capture warm air so that it will float and you attach your basket onto it and you get to float with it. Nice job. Thank you. I'm sure I got a few things wrong in there but we did okay.

I think that was pretty dang close. It sounds like somebody's being killed in the other room. I know, we should go investigate. You want to take a break? Yeah, let's take a break and we'll get to how to pilot these beasts. Hey everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn?

So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. Just about everything you want to do in life depends on what you know. To earn more, learn more at Houston Community College. All right, Josh, nice job on science. I feel like you're jinxing me every time you compliment me on that.

No. I think somebody's going to write in and be like, I'm embarrassed for you. How badly you got that wrong. So if you go to pilot one of these things, it's pretty simple. And when I say pretty simple, that is not to remove the amount of admiration I have for these pilots because it takes skill. Like you and I can't just jump in one. We would kill ourselves.

Oh yeah. And if we piloted one. No, yeah. It takes hundreds of hours to become a good pilot of a hot air balloon. Yeah, it's kind of like when I went to Vancouver, I took that float plane trip with Reggie, the Vancouver pilot. And I was, I didn't mean to insult them, but while we were flying, I looked at them and I was like, Reggie, I'm just looking at what you're doing.

And I said, I feel like I could do this. Oh, I said, it looks, you know, it doesn't look too hard. And he said, it's not. He said, it's flying in great conditions is super easy. He said, it's flying in not great conditions is where you earn your stripes. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, oh, yeah, because he was just doing some levers and steering a thing and doing it.

Pedaling really hard stuff. Yeah. Yeah, pedaling really quick. The same feeling it's like with a hot air balloon pilot, it's, it's pretty simple at its basis because all you're doing, literally the only controls you have are to make that thing go up and down, right up by releasing more hot air down because you have a cord attached to the valve at the top, yes, that releases valve, yeah, releases some of that hot air.

So you can sink and land. Yeah. And that's it. Yeah. Basically there's a strip, a circular strip at the very top of the balloon. And when you pull on that cord, it opens it up, it pulls it away a little bit. And by releasing some of that hot air, you're cooling effectively the air inside the envelope. So you start to come down.

So you got up and you got down. But Josh. Yes. How did they go left and right? How do they fly horizontally in different directions? It seems like you would just go where the wind takes you. You do. So how do they go in different directions?

Well, apparently. So there is wind and then there's also something called wind aloft and wind aloft is in the atmosphere. Yeah. And it goes in different directions at different altitudes. There you have it. So if you want to go, say, west, you rise up to 1300 feet. Where the winds blow west.

If you want to go around in circles a few times, you go north. Oh yeah? By going up to 2800 feet. That's right. So basically, all they're doing is controlling altitude to control horizontal direction based on wind patterns. Yeah. Which, again, doesn't sound that hard.

It still consists of up and down. It's just going up and down to the right places depending on where you want to go. The thing is, this takes a tremendous amount of skill and experience, I would say, too. Yes. It's almost like what you would call probably muscle memory because it takes about 30 seconds for the balloon to respond either way to either the valve or the burner. So you can't say, oh man, that power line's right in front of me. Let me get out of the way.

No, you got to see that coming from a long distance and say, let me get out of the way. Right. Like you're seeing a cruise ship or something. Did you see that video of the people that they had that same, that very thing happen to them? I don't know much of those videos. It was, I believe, in Virginia in 2013 or 2014. They just either didn't see a power line or I don't know what happened, but the guy tried

to pull out right before and go aloft, higher up, and they hit the power line. The whole thing just caught fire. Wow. Yes. Which is apparently a very, as far as hot air balloon accidents go, that is a fairly common accident. Yeah. I would imagine that's the, sure, power lines, probably one of the most awful ways to go.

I would imagine. Yeah. I would guess. Because it's slow. You can see it coming. You know, it's not like a car crash. Right. You're like, all right, we're getting closer to your death.

Closer to your death. Yeah. Yeah. That would be pretty bad. And of course, I'm not making light of it. That's truly terrible. Sure. So I kind of joked earlier that they don't know quite where they're going to land.

And that is true. They have an idea of where they want to land, and they've plotted this out. They're not just willy-nilly up there. But if you'll notice, when you're in a hot air balloon basket, one of the most vital people on your side are the ground team. Yeah. Which you have to have. If you're a hot air balloonist, the sum total of the people who are involved in your hot

air balloon trip are not in the balloon. No. There are many people following you in a car. That's right. Because they're basically following you to where you will eventually be able to land. Yeah. And again, you have an idea, possibly, of where you want to land. Maybe the county or the state that you want to land in.

But it probably doesn't go too much further than that. And I guess a safe pilot, well, number one, there's some conditions that you want to look for when you're piloting. For example, like you, when you start, before you go up, you want to have contacted a weather service. Sure. To find out which way the wind's blowing. At least look at your smartphone weather app.

I'm sure that there's probably hot air balloon apps for that kind of thing. Yeah. They give you a little more advanced wind detail. Right. You also don't want a thunderstorm within 100 miles? No. That's, lightning is terrible for hot air balloons. And hot air ballooning in the rain is dangerous and no fun anyway.

Yes, it is. And if you're a normal pilot, you're probably only going to want to fly in ideal conditions. Right? Yeah. Nice day with just a little bit of wind. Yeah. You don't want too strong a wind either. Yeah.

And you don't want the winds all off to be high because even on the ground, the wind can be fine. But up in the atmosphere, they might be going like crazy. So you want to know all the stuff before you take off. And then when you do take off, you're constantly looking around for potential emergency landing sites. Yeah. That's scary.

Yeah. You, I mean, you may, whatever happens, you may need to land immediately and it's not, it's not like pulling a car over on the shoulder of a highway, which can be dangerous enough at high speeds. True. This is like landing a hot air balloon, again, in a civilized world with lots of power lines everywhere and roads and lakes and all sorts of stuff that you don't want to fly into. So you constantly have to be looking out for a place to land.

Yeah. And then you think about all the stuff around you until you're up in a balloon like that. Yeah. And you know that each one of those things is a hazard. Yep. The other thing a pilot will probably do is send up just a regular old helium balloon. They call them pie balls, pilot balloons, but it's just a balloon. And they'll send that baby up there just to see like, okay, where's that guy going?

Because that's where we're going to be going. Right. And they watch it and just kind of chart its course for a little while. And then off they go. Oh, there's also some other things on board, of course. It's not just a basket. They're going to have an altimeter and a variometer just to know where they are, of course. And but other than that, it's pretty rudimentary.

Yeah, really? And the ground crew also is not just there to follow you in the car. And one of the reasons they're there following you in the car is to give you a ride back home because it's almost impossible to go land back at the same place you left from. Yeah, because you started in Georgia and you landed in Alabama. Right, exactly. So the ground crew is also there to help you set up, which apparently is not as involved as you would think.

It takes 10 to 15 minutes to unpack fully a hot air balloon and have it floating. Yeah, it's basically in a big stuff sack like a sleeping bag. They lay it out onto a covering, like a pad on the ground to protect it. They start blowing it up with a fan, just a regular old fan, just to kind of get some air in that thing. And then they will start shooting it with the hot air and it starts to increase in size and then rise up and they've got it tied to the truck or whatever, the basket. And everybody's holding it on the ground, I imagine.

And then until it, as it gets bigger and bigger, you just sort of sit around and wait, put the champagne on ice, because that's a tradition when you land. Yeah, as is the traditional leg of land per passenger. No, it really is. The champagne toast, that started back in the olden days to sort of placate farmers when they would land on their land. Oh, they bring champagne with them? Yeah, farmers were like, I don't want you landing on my land.

First of all, that thing scares me. Be here landing on my property, you're scaring my cattle. And the guy would be like, well, what about some champagne? Yeah, they would offer him champagne. And the farmer would be like, my one weakness. To this, well, the champagne, he was already drunk. Oh, gotcha. Because it was in the champagne region.

Oh, yes. Oh, France. He's like, I already have a bunch of this, I don't need your champagne. But that tradition still holds true today. You take a champagne toast when you land, you might say soft winds and gentle landings, or you might recite the balloonist blessing or balloonist prayer, which is, the winds have welcomed you with softness. The sun has blessed you with its warm hands.

You have flown so high and so well that God has joined you in your laughter and set you gently back into the loving arms of Mother Earth. Clink, guzzle, guzzle, burp. You didn't make that up just now? That wasn't riffing. That's the balloonist blessing. It's good, Chuck. Yeah, that was just scatting a poem.

You land, you drink the champagne, and then you're done. You go about your day. And everybody packs up and, yeah. Yeah, packing up takes you a little longer. I mean, you're the paying customer, so you're just like, see you later, but everybody else has to pack up. Yeah. Right.

Like I said, packing up takes a little longer, but it's not too different than packing a parachute or a sleeping bag or something. No, it's like you said, it's like a stuff sack, just packing it back in there. That's right. And an experienced pilot, it's not the easiest thing to land these smoothly. You know, you're going to bump and you might land a little too hard, but if you're an experienced pilot, you're going to bring it in nice and smooth. Yeah.

Bump a little bit, give everyone a good, ooh. And then the champagne comes out. And apparently the big draw of hot air ballooning is that it's a very serene experience. Yeah, I just kept running into that word over and over again. Everybody was like, it's a serene and peaceful experience ever. I think it'd be amazing. I mean, it sounds nice aside from just the height part. Oh, sure.

I get why you don't want to do it. Yeah. I would never expect that. So is it safe to do? Yes. I don't have any stats on deaths. I got some stats from what I saw. It is a relatively speaking safe thing to do.

There have been what seemed like an uptick in balloon accidents. It's possible that reporting is increased or media coverage is increased, but over the last few years, there have been some very high profile accidents. Apparently as of 2014, between 1964 and 2014, there were 775 balloon accidents in the U.S. with 70 fatalities and 16 people died ballooning from 2002 to 2012. So it does seem like there's an uptick in it somehow. 16 people over 10 years though. Right.

But 70 over, yeah, I guess it's about right. I guess it is average, like I said. But there were some high profile ones. The worst ever was in Egypt, actually, and I think over Luxor, 19 of 21 people on board a hot air balloon died when it caught fire. Yeah. We didn't point that out. We can make these baskets really large now if the balloon is large enough, obviously.

Yeah. I've seen double-deckers too. Yeah. I don't know about that. I haven't seen a double-decker. That sounds kind of neat. It's pretty neat. But supposedly, overall, it's a relatively safe thing to do.

Let's call it safe-ish. Safe-ish. And if you have some money, it's something you could get into. If you want a little two-person hot air balloon, it'll set you back about 22K and a three-to-four person $35,000 to $45,000 for your very own hot air balloon with everything. It includes everything. Yeah. They can be shaped like... They have all kinds of crazy shapes now, if you've seen balloon

shows. Yeah. I've seen them shaped like a castle or like a car or like Charlie Brown. I saw one with the spike through it. It was hilarious. Oh, like it was punctured? Uh-huh. That's the one I get in.

And then if you are into this kind of stuff or you want to find out whether you're into this kind of stuff, if you're in Georgia or the Southeast, you can go to Callaway Gardens Sky High Hot Air Balloon Festival. And then the big one is in Albuquerque. Oh, sure. The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. It happens every year. I think it's in a couple months.

Nice. Yeah. I'd love to go to that. So there you go. Hot air balloons. You got anything else? Yeah. I got some more stuff from our buddies at Mental Floss.

They had a great ten facts about hot air balloons. Here's one fact. Okay. There was a balloon duel in 1808. Oh, yeah. Two Frenchmen were in a love triangle and they figured the best way to settle it was to get up and shoot at each other's balloon. I feel like I've heard about that before.

Pretty silly Frenchy thing to do. And one of the guys shot the other guy's balloon, the other guy missed, and the balloon crashed and killed the guy. Wow. Hooray. And then in the U.S., the Union Army had a balloon corps. Abraham Lincoln started the balloon corps. They had seven balloons with names like the Intrepid and they would track enemy movement.

They've been using reconnaissance since the 1700s with the French Army. So the Union Army did that and then the Confederates made their own, I guess, out of whatever clothing they had laying around. And they just had the one balloon that was captured by the Union Army. Oh, really? Yeah. In 1863. They were like, give us back our balloons, sir.

Wow. Well, thanks, Chuck. Thank you, friends at Mental Floss. Thank you for listening to this episode of Stuff You Should Know. If you want to know more about hot air balloons and alchemy, you can type that word into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said alchemy, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this a surefire way to get on Listener Mail.

The guys are writing you from the county of Essex in England. Only started listening about a month ago and I can't get enough. I've been trying to think of the best way to guarantee it's red on the air, so I found out some common traits. One, it should complement you and massage your egos in some way. And number two, for balance, the letter should point out a mistake or oversight, but also make an interesting contribution. Yeah, this guy's got it set.

So first of all, I love the podcast. You're both awesome and really funny and smart. Second, I really am intrigued by the podcast on left handies. Left handies? Left handers. What's this called? Lefties. And particularly the bit about how being left handed can be an advantage in sports.

As you were saying, I felt sure that you had mentioned the case of Raphael Nadal, the tennis player, was mentally imploring you to do so, but you're not familiar with the story, I guess. No. He was born right handed, but from the first time he picked up a racket, he was trained by his uncle to play with his left hand to give him advantage and make it more difficult to beat. Most people believe him to be left handed, but don't you think that's amazing that a

player can become the best in the world, or at least the best on Clay Court ever, perhaps, playing with their weaker hand? Pretty neat. It is very neat. It also poses an interesting question over how much the dominant hand that we're born with is actually just a state of mind that can be retrained. Keep up the good work, Chaps, and that is from Joe Broomfield. Thanks a lot, Joe.

Essence. Yeah, that worked pretty well. That was a classic listener mail. Classic. If you want to try your hand at a classic listener mail, you can lay it on us, but we are also always willing to give points for creativity, too. Sure. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K Podcast.

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